Edutopia Edutopia is an amazing site where one great video leads to another. Below are some reflections on videos from this site. Around the Clock Learning, Extending the Definition of School
This video described an inner city Chicago school, mostly populated with English Language Learners where the school, family, and community are integrated seamlessly. It is a school that once had great difficulties and now has a high school graduation rate of nearly 100%. The school operates from early in the morning until late at night, Saturdays, and summers. It is a Pre-K to High School program with students from different age groups attending at different times of the day. Younger students come earlier and high school students arrive at 11:00 AM, but still put in an eight hour day in addition to internships in the morning before school. The students graduate high school in three years because of summer attendance and parents are instructed in literacy, computers, and math in the evening. This school seemed wonderful to me and is in exactly the place that I hope our school will be in some day. The school principal said that the family is the biggest influence on students and the community is the greatest influence on families, so if schools can become a much greater influence in the community, it can have a greater impact on students. This is a wise sentiment and the attitude that those of us working with at-risk students need to adopt and promote.
Comprehensive Assessment Drives Long-Term Success in Middle and High School
This video reported on the use of assessments which drives instruction in the School of the Future inNew York City. The teachers in this school use authentic assessment, checking everyday on students' progress to determine if they are effectively teaching. All teachers should be following the protocol. The teachers in this school are assessing whether or not their students are effectively thinking, not just if they are recalling material. An example of an assessment used in math to assess understanding of slope is to have students measure stairs to determine if they are in compliance with New York City Building Codes. This is a real-world application of classroom learning and shows whether students are thinking critically. The teachers in this school talked about the fact that they are teaching the discipline of thinking. They are not teaching students history, for example, or science, but how to think like historians and scientists.
I watched several videos from this school and they are all inspiring. The teachers are so intelligent and intuitive about their teaching and about knowing each student and what they need. The sixth grade reading teaching was constantly assessing student understanding by using post-it notes to gather their responses to reading, charting their success on a continuum, then grouping and differentiating instruction based on her analysis of the responses.
The teachers in this school are doing what teachers everywhere should be doing and sadly are not. It was apparent to me that these teachers are extremely intelligent and passionate about what they are doing. Thinking Big About Engagement This was another video from the School of the Future. It described a sixth grade science class with a dynamic and extremely innovative teacher. To teach about cells, he created a giant cell out of thin plastic then held his classes inside the cell. The components of the cell were also inside. Students studied cells and cell parts and then acted as teachers. In seeing the engagement of these students and their enthusiasm for teaching and learning, I thought about the truth in the phrase, "to teach is to learn twice." The students talked about how much they loved the class and how they enjoyed teaching others. It was refreshing to see such enthusiasm. Especially after having watched the webinar about how students lose enthusiasm and passion as they grow. While, I believe that that is true, it is also apparent that with the right approach to teaching and knowledge of your students, this trend can be overcome in many cases. This teacher also had a hands on project designed for students to apply the concept of the interconnectedness of cell parts to the design of the NYC subway system and to other working facets ofNew York. They created three-dimensional projects in which they showed how parts of the city could be shown to be similar to the parts of a cell. This is the type of real-world learning and application that needs to be a part of all of our curriculum and instruction.
Edutopia is an amazing site where one great video leads to another. Below are some reflections on videos from this site.
Around the Clock Learning, Extending the Definition of School
This video described an inner city Chicago school, mostly populated with English Language Learners where the school, family, and community are integrated seamlessly. It is a school that once had great difficulties and now has a high school graduation rate of nearly 100%. The school operates from early in the morning until late at night, Saturdays, and summers. It is a Pre-K to High School program with students from different age groups attending at different times of the day. Younger students come earlier and high school students arrive at 11:00 AM, but still put in an eight hour day in addition to internships in the morning before school. The students graduate high school in three years because of summer attendance and parents are instructed in literacy, computers, and math in the evening.
This school seemed wonderful to me and is in exactly the place that I hope our school will be in some day. The school principal said that the family is the biggest influence on students and the community is the greatest influence on families, so if schools can become a much greater influence in the community, it can have a greater impact on students. This is a wise sentiment and the attitude that those of us working with at-risk students need to adopt and promote.
Comprehensive Assessment Drives Long-Term Success in Middle and High School
This video reported on the use of assessments which drives instruction in the School of the Future inNew York City. The teachers in this school use authentic assessment, checking everyday on students' progress to determine if they are effectively teaching. All teachers should be following the protocol. The teachers in this school are assessing whether or not their students are effectively thinking, not just if they are recalling material. An example of an assessment used in math to assess understanding of slope is to have students measure stairs to determine if they are in compliance with New York City Building Codes. This is a real-world application of classroom learning and shows whether students are thinking critically. The teachers in this school talked about the fact that they are teaching the discipline of thinking. They are not teaching students history, for example, or science, but how to think like historians and scientists.
I watched several videos from this school and they are all inspiring. The teachers are so intelligent and intuitive about their teaching and about knowing each student and what they need. The sixth grade reading teaching was constantly assessing student understanding by using post-it notes to gather their responses to reading, charting their success on a continuum, then grouping and differentiating instruction based on her analysis of the responses.
The teachers in this school are doing what teachers everywhere should be doing and sadly are not. It was apparent to me that these teachers are extremely intelligent and passionate about what they are doing.
Thinking Big About Engagement
This was another video from the School of the Future. It described a sixth grade science class with a dynamic and extremely innovative teacher. To teach about cells, he created a giant cell out of thin plastic then held his classes inside the cell. The components of the cell were also inside. Students studied cells and cell parts and then acted as teachers. In seeing the engagement of these students and their enthusiasm for teaching and learning, I thought about the truth in the phrase, "to teach is to learn twice." The students talked about how much they loved the class and how they enjoyed teaching others. It was refreshing to see such enthusiasm. Especially after having watched the webinar about how students lose enthusiasm and passion as they grow. While, I believe that that is true, it is also apparent that with the right approach to teaching and knowledge of your students, this trend can be overcome in many cases.
This teacher also had a hands on project designed for students to apply the concept of the interconnectedness of cell parts to the design of the NYC subway system and to other working facets ofNew York. They created three-dimensional projects in which they showed how parts of the city could be shown to be similar to the parts of a cell. This is the type of real-world learning and application that needs to be a part of all of our curriculum and instruction.